Deadly.
“So … when do I meet Madame Strings?”
He lifts a brow. “Eager, are we?”
You have no idea.
* * *
I’m led down a coiled staircase, then a long, stone corridor lit by flaming sconces. Guards open huge stone doors that creak their protest, and the heavy scent of spicy incense swirls around me.
“Enjoy,” Brother Beryll says, offering a slimy wink that makes my skin crawl.
Soft moans coax a frown as I ease past drapes of sheer gray material tethered to the ceiling. Nudging into the open, my boots become tethered to the stone.
Ahead is a heaving pit of flesh—people with glazed, faraway gazes, paired off or gathered in writhing groups, naked aside from the women decorated in strings of silver bells that tailor to their voluptuous curves and jingle as they bounce, roll,thrust.
Guttural moans, sated groans, and the building cries of passion fill the large room ignited by bowls of flaming oil balanced on pedestals. The ceiling is high, the floor padded with plush gray furnishings: chaises; massive floor pillows; thick, fluffy rugs; and a mammoth four-poster bed sitting in the center of the space.
My gaze coasts across the mounds of flesh and fuckery, seeing small bowls of iridescent powder placed on pillows and stools throughout the open room, glimmering in the firelight.
A low growl boils in the back of my throat, my rage spurred into a hissing, spitting beast.
A curvaceous woman peels from a tangle of limbs and body parts moving about the bed, an elegance to the way she makes each step look featherlight. Streaks of gray swirl across her bronze skin, smudged in places.
Our gazes collide—her eyes so blue and bold, a contrast to the blackness smudged around them, splaying toward her temples. Sharpened bits of bone pierce her lobes, and delicate inked lines trace from her full lower lip down her chin and neck before flaring across her plump breasts that bounce as she sways toward me.
“You must be the new runner,” she purrs, her voice laced with a suggestive slur that would usually spur straight to my cock. But I’m too distracted by the strings beaded with tiny bells that are coiled around the dreaded lengths of her long, tawny hair. That and the commanding glint in her eye, as though she’s used to being in charge.
My heart is a thundering roar in my ears.
Madame Strings.
Pushing back my hood, I run my hands over my scalp, missing the tug of my hair. “Yes.”
Her eyes hunger over my face. The expanse of my shoulders.
“I’m here for the induction,” I continue, and she steps so close I’m struck by the citrus punch of whatever fragrance she’s wearing.
Threading her hand around the back of my neck, she leans near to my ear and draws deep before teasing wisps of breath upon my lobe. “Thisis the induction,” she murmurs, and my skin pebbles for all the wrong reasons.
Head cocked to the side, she toys with my robe in a suggestive way.
I swallow thickly, crunching my hands into balls. Fight the urge to shove her off. Wishing I’d had the foresight to get blind drunk before I stepped onto that fucking ferry.
Get it together, Baze.
“I thought the Shulák valued chastity before coupling? I see no cupla on your wrist.”
Her eyes ignite, the corner of her lips curling as she studies me like she sees my nonchalance and wants to fuck it right out of me. “I’m coupled with my faith,” she says, then slides her finger past her lips andsucks, hollowing her cheeks.
The faintest stir of excitement strikes the most basic part of me while a flood of disgust almost chokes the rest.
With a knowing glint in her eye, she pulls her finger free with a wetpop,then dips it in the bowl of Candescence perched atop a stool beside us. My blood chills when she brings the sparkly substance to my lips, stepping so close her breasts flatten against my chest. “Open for me.”
Ghosts gnaw at my brain like flesh-eating worms …
Yield for me, my pretty boy.
